Haha yea let's continue to badger the people that created some of the best games ever made, along with the most efficient and massive platform for video game distribution of our generation. Take your time with HL2ep3 Valve we can wait.

TestECull:Google --> Steam crack --> Download --> Scan with over 9001 antivirus programs --> Install --> Not out of any of my Steam games. I'm not worried about Steam shutting down or going dark at all.

Omega Pirate:If they shut down steam..... I won't be effected at all. =) Truthfully I would love to get a steam account, but there are some hurdles. My PC is old and won't run most new games, and my laptop is Mac. Steam does not yet have many Mac games on it, when it does ill get it.

Omega Pirate:If they shut down steam..... I won't be effected at all. =) Truthfully I would love to get a steam account, but there are some hurdles. My PC is old and won't run most new games, and my laptop is Mac. Steam does not yet have many Mac games on it, when it does ill get it.

In the words of Luke Skywalker, "NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Jesus Phish:I've often wondered what happens if Steam was to close. Would they release DRM removal kits to everyone before they closed, freeing up the games. Or would they hide behind legal stuff and try get out and leave us all to go online and look for cracks ourself.

No one ever reads the terms and conditions.Take a quick read, My ed games design teacher showed us.You don't own those games, you own the right to play them.

Jesus Phish:I've often wondered what happens if Steam was to close. Would they release DRM removal kits to everyone before they closed, freeing up the games. Or would they hide behind legal stuff and try get out and leave us all to go online and look for cracks ourself.

No one ever reads the terms and conditions.Take a quick read, My ed games design teacher showed us.You don't own those games, you own the right to play them.

Of course people don't read them. They're stupidly long and usually written in jargon that puts people off reading them. As someone else has said, Valve have gone on record to say they've something in place in case they ever went down.

Guest_Star:Meh... Steam, Schmeam.Asides from a couple of stupid titles that DEMAND I remain connected to the Steam (even if I have the actual factual retail discs) I wouldn't be affected (and that is the reason we have cracks).Most'a my games are from GamersGate or GOG anyways.

As opposed to all those non-factual retail discs out there. Hoo boy.

Anyways, if Steam shut down, I'd kind of be annoyed for awhile. I guess. It'd suck for awhile, but I think I'd get over it.

matrix3509:The detail you are all missing is I'm pretty sure authentification is not a word, and if it is, it is completely the wrong word to use in that situation.

/Grammer Nazi

Every time someone calls Gabe Newell fat, he adds an F to a word in the english lexicon... and everyone else has to use it too!

redbeta22:Please let Steam close down soon. I hate the stranglehold they have on the PC market.

To be fair they only have that stranglehold because no other competitor has ever managed to "get right" every aspect of value-added that steam has, so nobody has exactly earned the right to compete seriously. Most of the other entries in the field are tripe like Games For Windows Live, which is obviously the product of multiple different development teams whose management staff either lack teamwork skills or are outright in a feud with one another.

If someone was actually capable of scraping together a competitor that didn't fail significantly at something customers currently receive from Steam, we wouldn't have that issue.

It's not like there isn't enough venture capital out there for established players to develop such a thing, either. They're just not competent enough to develop one yet. There are several good alternatives that do fewer things and do them well, but they still do fewer things, so people are going to be drawn to where the features they want are consolidated together.

A monopoly is never a good thing, but we have the competition to blame for that. Even competitors like Microsoft, which is a company that has specialized in questionably legal anti-competitive practices (and been ruled guilty of many clearly illegal ones), hasn't managed to edge their way in, because the competition has been about the appeal of the product to the customer, rather than the typical tools of monopolism: crime and subterfuge.